by Jack Hardin
I have left you with information that I have spent the last six months gathering on Felix’s cartel. Information on his homes, security details, offshore banking records, and distribution routes into the United States.
Seven years ago, you came to get me in Novosibirsk. You did not find me then. You will not find me now. I have decided that I will no longer work for the cartels. They cannot be trusted. So I have fled. Where I have gone, you will never find me.
So, let us put this behind us, shall we?
P.P.
Ellie finished reading it and handed it to Hailey. She read it and dropped her arm. “He played us,” Hailey said.
“Yeah,” Ellie said, dully. It was all coming together now. Pavel had fallen out of favor with the cartels that he had moved out here to service with weapons. Instead of waiting around for them to kill him, he decided to overload the United States with information on Colonia Nueva Generacion. Using his son to set off the bomb was a creative, if not a brilliant way to get the U.S. government hot on his trail, just he could get them this information. With this, it wouldn’t take the DEA long to put the screws to Felix and his men. Pavel would be free from the cartel hunting him down.
Twice, she thought. He had outsmarted her twice. The plan was brilliant. If Pavel wasn’t lying, then what was on that USB drive would make what they got from Ernesto look like a hurriedly written memo. The DEA would swoop in and dismantle Felix’s cartel. And then Pavel would be free from Felix’s hunters. Pavel would once again get away scot-free.
“Come on,” Ellie said. “I guess it’s time to go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Pavel Petronovich walked with the confident and self-assured gait of a man who had bet against the devil and won.
His feet splashed into a standing pool of brackish water as he moved through a saturated dip along the embankment. Resettling his duffle bag across his shoulders, he continued forward.
Seven years had elapsed since he had felt such an engulfing and exhilarating sense of power. It had been that long since he had last set foot in his beloved Russia, since the Americans had come for him and he had run for his life. There had not been a moment since when he did not think of what that day had cost him. Back then he felt as though he could do nothing wrong, as though he were the king of the world—invincible even. And in his little corner of the world, he had been. He supplied small arms for forty percent of Africa’s revolutionaries and the Middle East’s insurgents. The weapons went out, and the money flooded in—millions and then tens of millions every month. He was untouchable, and even when the most well-trained, most informed country in the world had come to get him, he had still managed to slip away.
But what finally did him in was not a foreign government locating and freezing his Swiss bank accounts, it was not another raid on a safe house or an assault on his supply line. It was far more menial than that. Looking back on it all, Pavel should have gone into hiding in Moldova, or even Belarus. He saw that all too clearly now. But instead, he had gone into Slovenia and hidden deep within the Kamnik Alps, far from the searching eyes of Western governments. But, and perhaps more importantly, he was far from his suppliers and his buyers. Pavel’s pressing need to lie low and stay out of sight had given his competition an opportunity that he would have never imagined they would have been bold enough to capitalize on. That was the biggest mistake of his career, and it ended up costing him just about everything.
At first, the orders still came in, and Anatoly saw to it that they were fulfilled with the precision and timeliness that their clients had come to expect. But once word got around that Pavel was in exile, arms dealers in Ukraine and Kazakhstan slowly began to intercept supply shipments that Pavel was unable to deal with firsthand. So in a decision that was fueled by desperation and rage, he snuck back into Russia, hoping to put some fear into all those who thought they could just steamroll his business in his absence. But he returned to his homeland to find that his infrastructure had already crumbled and men who had been loyal to him for over a decade had switched sides for better pay and less risk.
In the end, it was a geographical mistake that cost him his black market empire. Pavel had been too secluded, too far away for others to feel the weight of his iron fist. So he finally took his few remaining connections to Algeria, where he supplied small arms to rebel factions in the south region of the country. The business was but a fraction of the scale he had become accustomed to, and even that dried up soon enough.
Eventually, Pavel could feel himself slipping further and further down a dark hole, drinking too much imported vodka and wallowing over the loss of his business fortunes. He was stuck in an uninteresting country in North Africa with nowhere else to go. But fate would see to it that he was given another chance. He was eating a late breakfast at a sidewalk cafe in Ouargla when two Englishmen took the table behind him. They placed their orders and commenced, as though no one was around to hear them, to freely discuss their business dealings in South and Central America. It didn’t take Pavel long to discern that he was sitting behind two men who made their living by creating shell companies for Colombian and Peruvian drug lords so the latter could easily hide their illicit profits. Such information was of interest to Pavel, but his business acumen kicked into gear when one of them mentioned that the Mexican cartels were in growing need of easily accessible firearms.
It was as if Santa had just thrown a hefty bag of goodies down the chimney. Pavel waited for the men to finish their meal and leave before hurrying back to his flat and locating the number to a former officer he had served alongside in the Spetsnaz. Yuri Buturlin had been supplying the cartels with surveillance and computer technology for over a decade, and Pavel knew that if anyone had the means to connect him into that world, it would be him.
And so Yuri had. Pavel spent the next month on the phone, building an entirely new network on the other side of the Atlantic, making fresh connections there and forging new relationships. And then, two years after he fled from Novosibirsk, Pavel sailed out of Casablanca on a freighter bound for Mexico, alone, but eager and hopeful.
The Mexicans, as it turned out, welcomed him gladly, and once Pavel’s first shipment of arms arrived, he was completely in their trust. They paid well. Pavel became the primary supplier of semi-automatic weapons for Joaquín Plancarte, the feared and ruthless founder of Colonia Nueva Generacion, the fastest-growing cartel in the world.
Pavel bought a ranch in southern Zacatecas, four hundred acres along the edge of the mountains north of Guadalajara. He built a sixteen bedroom mansion and filled it with furniture from Brazil, art from France, and women from Veracruz. Life was good again, and Pavel, while no longer on a throne of his own, was satisfied with the newfound success he had found in a country whose language he didn’t even speak.
But then.
But then two years ago Plancarte’s second in command initiated a successful coup that had Plancarte’s body swinging from a highway overpass and his head on display in the window of a local butcher shop. Rafael Félix was now in command, and he was not so minded to be as kind and generous to the Russian arms dealer as his predecessor had been. He ordered Pavel to slash his prices and took over Pavel’s ranch and gave it to one of his adult sons. Pavel was given nothing more than a hut on the outskirts of Fresnillo and became entirely subjected to the arbitrary whims of the merciless psychopath at the head of Colonia Nueva Generacion. And Pavel, who had all his eggs in the one Mexican basket, was under no position to negotiate. Trying to take your services to a neighboring cartel was as good a way as any to ensure that your head would be placed in the window of a butcher shop. Pavel continued to negotiate with suppliers in Russia and the Baltics and bring in weapons for Félix. But the drug kingpin paid him no heed and continued to squeeze out his profits until there was nothing left and Pavel went to sleep each night under a blanket of fear, wondering if Félix’s people would come and take care of him while he slept.
He felt the sharp prick of a thorn as
he pushed through a honey mesquite and continued plodding through the sticky mud, recalling when the plan hatched in his mind nearly a year ago. He had been waiting for a delivery, and his crew was huddled around a television, watching some idiotic show on Azteca Uno. When the program cut to commercial, the bubble gym advertisement featured a white man who Pavel thought looked a great deal like Peter.
After successfully fleeing the safe house all those years ago and leaving Peter with instructions to return to America, Pavel just forgot about him. It wasn’t that Peter came to mind in moments when he was reminiscing about his former empire or when he was scheming to rebuild. Pavel just never thought about him. At least, not until that day he saw the bubble gum commercial, and then he started to wonder if the boy had followed through on what he had told him to do, or if he had found a way to screw that up. So Pavel located him and found that he was still living with his mother and teaching at some school. He couldn’t believe it. He had actually done what he was told.
And that was when the plan hatched like a dark and sinister creature at the forefront of Pavel’s mind. It came to him easily, like the seeds of it had been there all along. He sent Peter a phone and got the ball rolling.
Now, nine months later, he was breathing in the clean air of freedom and relishing the knowledge that he had, once again, outwitted a hated adversary. The water was past his ankles now, but he paid it no mind. It felt cool against his hot and blistered feet.
He had begun his fevered journey to the Mexican coast at Matehuala and then proceeded to switch cars three times—once in Los Terrenos, next in Jamauve, and finally in Soto La Marina after he had successfully put the mountains behind him. He drove another forty kilometers across Mexico State Road 52 before abandoning the Nissan Tsuru in a restaurant parking lot and footing the final five kilometers through coastal marshes, swamps, and wetlands that formed the spongy edge of the Soto La Marina River. He pushed through the boughs of a royal oak and smiled. He went a little further, and his boots thumped on the dock’s camouflaged pine boards. He strode across the dock, away from the marsh and over the open water.
A young man was standing at the end of the dock, looking down. Hearing the footsteps behind him, he turned.
Pavel approached and extended a hand. He spoke in heavily accented English. “You made it on time,” he said. “That is very good. Very, very good, Nico.”
Nico watched as the Russian man who he knew as Pavel stepped to the edge of the dock and looked down through the hatch and into the belly of the small submarine. “And you have tested it?” he asked.
“For the last hour, here in the channel. Carlos has showed me how to operate the controls. He fitted all the instruments. Everything works as it should.”
“You are confident that you can operate it all the way?”
“Yes,” Nico said.
Pavel slipped his duffle bag off his shoulders. “It is ready?”
“Yes.” Nico stepped to the side. “The rungs start just inside the hatch. They go all the way to the bottom.”
Pavel nodded and set his bag down. He leaned down and placed his hands on the inside rim of the hatch. The vessel listed slightly in the water. “The air tanks are full,” Nico said from behind him. “But it is stable.” Pavel gained a fresh grip, swiveled around, and lowered himself into the hatch, where he took the rungs down one by one. Once his feet were at the bottom, he called for his bag. Nico lowered it down to him.
The sun was still high in the sky. Nico looked around one last time, saying a final and silent goodbye to the only country he had ever known. Being out here, on the coastline, it didn’t even feel like Mexico anymore. At least, not the dry and gritty Mexico he was most familiar with. Not that hard ruddy land that was so antagonistic to the lush green out here along the Gulf of Mexico.
Nico descended the ladder. He already had a battery-powered lantern illuminating the interior. He shut the hatch, threw the latch, and continued the last couple of feet to the bottom.
Pavel was already sitting comfortably in a folding camping chair. He appeared happy and calm. Nico, on the other hand, was a jitter of nerves. He had told Pavel that he could pilot this, and he was sure that he could. But building it and piloting it were two very different things. Carlos had spent hours and hours with Nico in the shop, walking him through each control, each reading, and how to navigate his way through the Gulf Stream and avoid offshore oil rigs and passing freighters. And they had practiced here in the unfrequented channel of the river. He knew he could do it, and the dull ache he felt to get to America to live with his cousin compelled him to try. The incredible amount of money the Russian had paid him helped too.
“Are you ready?” Nico asked.
Pavel tossed his hands out. A bottle of vodka was wedged between his thighs. “Let’s be going.”
Nico nodded and tried to appear confident as he moved aft toward the controls. He took a seat and started the diesel engines that would run the propeller and a generator used to charge the batteries. Nico had fitted a steel snorkel to the top of the hull so the engines could ventilate, but that meant that they would have to cruise at the surface while the engines were running. It was the batteries that would allow them to submerge and stay hidden beneath the surface. The specialized paint that Pavel had ordered, and that Nico had applied, would deflect radar so they could not be detected by search planes or American Coast Guard patrols.
Nico flipped an orange switch and the propeller started to churn in the water, slowly at first, and then faster. Nico’s lips began to move as he prayed silently to the Virgin Mother and engaged the rudder. The submarine moved slowly out of the shallows and slipped away from the mouth of the river and into the Gulf of Mexico. Nico kept an eye on the sonar readings displayed on the screen in front of him. Another screen showed his course in an arced line that ended just under fifteen hundred kilometers away. Nico’s nerves began to settle as they moved successfully into open water without incident.
He turned back around and held his breath as he stared frightfully at another button. This one was blue. It took all the courage he could muster, but he held his breath and pressed it. He heard the engines cut off, and only a muted drone ensued. He heard the click of the snorkel closing shut, and his readings showed them descending slowly beneath the surface. The hull creaked and groaned. Nico found that he was wincing, just waiting for something to snap under the pressure and water to start trickling or flowing in.
Nothing happened. The screen showed that they had reached their cruising depth. The creaking ceased, and the submarine seemed to settle into its course like a migrating fish. Nico settled back into his chair with a relieved sigh.
It worked. The submarine really worked.
He allowed himself a quick glance over his shoulder and saw to his surprise that the Russian was asleep, his head tilted and resting on the back of the chair, his mouth open. Nico felt a great urge to join him, but couldn’t. Not yet. Not until they got farther into their journey without incident. Three long months of secret work and they were finally on their way. It was almost unbelievable.
Nico recalled meeting the man only five months ago, when the imposing Russian man had appeared in his shop that day, his thick gray beard covering most of his face, his stocky shoulders and distended midsection filling out his shirt, clutching a bag filled with U.S. dollars. Pavel thought he was trying to talk to him about a narco-sub. He did have the second half of that equation right. The man wanted him to build a submarine, much like the cartels were famous for using to transport their drugs across great distances. But the man had no interest in the narco part. Just the submarine. Nico had protested in a way, explaining that, while he was an excellent welder, he had never built anything like that. Pavel produced a thumb drive and told the younger man that the expect specifications for what he needed were on there. Later, when Nico plugged it into his computer, he realized that he was looking at the exact plans for a narco-sub. He didn't know how the man had acquired them and decided rather quickly t
hat he had not the slightest interest in knowing.
Nico had stocked the vessel with food, blankets and pillows, water, energy drinks, and buckets with their accompanying lids so they could relieve themselves. There were half a dozen oxygen tanks and two face masks. Nico would have to wake the older man soon so he could slip on his mask.
It was a three-day trip to their destination. Nico grabbed a bottle of water and settled into his chair, trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong between now and then.
Chapter Thirty
The Tahoe pulled onto the airstrip and came to a stop alongside the jet’s open stairs. Arturo kept the engine running as he got out and came around to the other side. Hailey shook his hand and wished him well before boarding the aircraft.
“Agent O’Conner,” Arturo said. “I’m sorry your investigation ended this way.”
“Thank you for what you did,” she said. “It was commendable. And please tell Antonio that we’re grateful.”
He nodded. “It was a pleasure.”
They shook hands, and Ellie turned and started up the stairs. Pavel’s letter was in her backpack, and the taunting nature of its existence seemed to add an extra weight to her shoulder. She ducked as she stepped on board and chose a seat facing Hailey.
She texted Cooper, thanking him again for his help, and was about to set her phone down when it occurred to her that she hadn’t heard from Katie since their conversation about Carl the other day. Ellie sent her an inquiring text and had a reply just before they taxied down the runway. Katie said she had gone to Fort Lauderdale for a few days to get away and think and that she would stop by Ellie’s as soon as she got back.
When she returned to the office tomorrow, Ellie planned on pulling someone from IT aside and asking them to find what they could on Carl Trueman. If Carl wanted to be a problem, he was going to have to deal with her.